From 2004 to 2005: Teens who attend middle schools where drugs are used, kept or sold are at 3 times the substance-abuse
risk of those attending drug-free middle schools (0.90 vs. 0.31). Teens who attend high schools where drugs are used, kept or sold are at 60% greater risk than
those attending drug-free high schools (1.67 vs. 1.06).

if you're visiting the layer down under because teenscene wasn't what you were searching for..... scroll down to the bottom of the page! i'm glad to see you here!

When a loved one becomes anaddict, we can become
so focused on trying to help &supportthat person that we lose track of our own feelings& needs. When wesupportaddictsor protectthem from the problems they create, we "enable" them to continue theiraddiction.

Afantasy that you can rescue theaddictoralcoholicis one of the warning signs ofcodependency. The more codependentyou become, the less you're in touch with the distortions of reality causedby theaddictivebehavior.

You may eventually lose your own identity
as you attempt to rescueorprotect theaddict.

Codependencyis common among the family & friends ofaddicts. Many substance abuse treatment centers offer treatmentforcodependency.

can't cope?

codependency allows you to give up all your
choices to be totally dependent on someone else... it forces someone else to be responsible for you... it's a negative coping mechanism!

There are probably several kinds ofworkaholics(Killinger, 1997), including the people happily & highly invested in their work ("I love it but the wife doesn't like it & I miss being
with my kids") & employees driven to overwork by fears, threats, perfectionism, compulsiveity, or competition.

The happy 10-hour-a-day person who feels his / her life work is important & has a good family life, meaningful relations at work & with friends, wouldn't be seriously labeled a workaholic. Robinson (1998) describes the unhealthyworkaholic personality but in this book mostly discusses dealing with it in Cognitive therapy.

Certainly
liking your work is better than hating it, but few jobs are worthy of all your time even if you love it. If you work more than 50 hours a week, you need a honestunderstanding of why you're driven.

If yourmotivationisn't clear, talk with your family or even your colleagues or see a therapist. Try to find the right job,relax, exercise & don'tneglectyour family (Fassel, 1993; Morris & Charney, 1983; Oates, 1979).

Often
greater efficiency is more important than long hours. Although it's just getting started, Workaholics Anonymous may provide some information & WA group
locations.

Professional help is also
appropriate if you have made a couple of genuine attempts to help yourself without success. Don't be ashamed of your self-help efforts & don't hesitate to seek expert help. It's just smart.

Nicotine:From 2004 to 2005: Teens who believe smoking cigarettes by someone their age is "not morally wrong" are more than 7 times likelier
to smoke than those who believeteen smoking is "seriously morally wrong."

Nicotine, which is a stimulant drug, is one of the leading causes of death in the US.

The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) declared nicotine a drug on July 12, 1996, despite increasing protests
by tobacco companies. Of all deaths in the US, 20% can be attributed to the effects of smoking.

Types

Cigarettes

Cigars

Pipes

Chewing tobacco

Methods
of Use

Tobacco can be smoked in a rolled cigarette
or cigar or in a pipe. It can also be chewed.

Effects on the Central Nervous SystemNicotineis a stimulant that has a very rapid effect on the central nervous
system. It can reach the brain within 8 seconds of smoking a cigarette.

Because nicotine is so similar to acetylcholine, it's able to mimic acetylcholine actions in the brain, leading to
stimulating effects on all of those body functions.

At the same time, nicotine stimulates increases in another neurotransmitter
called dopamine, which stimulates the dopamine receptors in the brain's pleasure center to create a feeling of pleasure or euphoria.

a personal note: I've quit several times, sometimes
for years at a time, but always seem to go back to it. When things are difficult for me to cope with - it's very easy to reach out for just a few puffs - thinking "geez it'll be nice to relax a few minutes!" It's not.
I've developed asthma & that doesn't make me very happy!

kathleen

Nicotine
Intoxication

Nicotine intoxication generally happens
quickly because smoking is a highly effective delivery process. Nicotine goes straight to
the lungs, where it's absorbed by the blood, sent to the heart & pumped into the arteries & brain.

Life RisksAbout
45% of all smokers will die of a tobacco-related health problem (Petro, Lopez, Boreham, Thun & Heath, 1992). Nicotine use has decreased
among adult Americans, but it's been increasing among teenagers & children.

Nicotineis an addictive drug
that can cause tolerance, dependence & symptoms of withdrawal. The tars in tobacco, not the nicotine,
cause the cancers that frequently develop in the lungs, throat & other organs of chronic smokers.

Nicotine is one of the most heavily used addictive drugs
in the US. In 2002, 30% of the US population 12 & older or 71.5 million people used tobacco at least once in the month
prior to being interviewed.

This
figure includes:

3.8 million young people
age 12 to 17

14 million people age
18 to 25

53.7 million age 26 &
older *

Most
of them smoked cigarettes.

Cigarette smoking has been
the most popular method of taking nicotine since the beginning of the 20th century. In 1989,
the US Surgeon General issued a report that concluded that cigarettes & other forms of tobacco, such as cigars, pipe tobacco
& chewing tobacco, are addictive & that nicotine is the
drug in tobacco that causes addiction.

The
report also determined that smoking was a major cause of stroke & the 3rd leading cause of
death in the US. Statistics from the CDC indicate that tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of death in
the US, causing more than 440,000 deaths each year & resulting in an annual cost of more than $75 billion in direct medical
costs.(Seewww.cdc.gov/tobacco/issue.htm).

My own experiencewith quitting smoking has traveled down many avenues & side tracks like most smokers. I quit smoking
every time I got pregnant& continued to "not smoke" while
nursing, which was 5 times.

I quit smoking a few times
forreligiousreasons. It was against the fundamental rules of whatever religion I was participating in at the time,
so I can count at least 4-5 years of clean breathing due toreligion.

About 3 years ago...

Ibroke
both my tibia & fibula. It was a nasty break about 1 inch above my ankle of my right leg. I went thru a very difficult
time of healing with this break & it might have been because I was smoking.

Smokingcauses less oxygen
to go thru the red blood cells...

Your lower leg has very poor circulation to begin with...

My break wouldn't heal & the doctor told me before my 2nd bone graft that if
I didn't quit smoking, he wouldn't perform the surgery. He said that there was no reason to do it, if I wasn't going to let
my leg have the circulation it needed, as well as letting my blood get the oxygen it needed.

I quit smoking as ordered.Cold Turkey, that's how I always have quit smoking, about one year later, my leg began to
heal. It took that long for my body to get back to normal! I ended up spending almost 2 entire years in a wheel chair because
I was a smoker.

I started smoking again after my leg healed. My husband, a smoker, made it just too difficult to keep from smoking. I know, I had it beat & I went &
started smoking again. Then I got asthma.

Asthma isn't very fun to have.Recently
I watched my brother in law die from emphyazema. Not being able to breathe is very distressing both physically &
mentally. But still I didn't quit smoking. I just stopped smoking as much or stopped smoking totally while being hospitalized
twice for my asthma.

Now I'm about to become a grandmother.That's
right, any day now in fact. The baby is due March 6th, 2006. My daughter told me that she won't let the baby come over to
my house if we're smoking in the house.

That's a really good reason to quit smoking, don't you
think? Back to the beginning, baby reasons to quit smoking... but I had to think about some other things this time....

I have three kids at home breathing in cigarette smoke. I have three dogs breathing
in our cigarette smoke. Both my husband & I have asthma. Our house & clothes all smell like cigarette smoke. When
my kids go somewhere, people make comments about how they can smell the cigarette smoke on them. I can imagine that their
lungs are looking pretty bad as well as my own.

Another thing, I've mentioned throughout the sites, I have post traumatic stress
disorder. I have horrible sleep habits as well. Nicotine is a stimulant and it doesn't help my anxiety or my sleep habits.
In fact, I know that it is bad for me - all around - period - no ifs - ands - or buts! I do hate the smell. My hair smells
like cigarettes no matter how much I wash it.

This time I've made a choice to quit smoking for me. I will succeed, cold turkey
& I'll never smoke again.

This time while quitting smoking, I've been overcome physically. My body has felt like I've had the flu. Every inch
of my body has been aching. My head hurts, I feel like I've got a severe hangover.

I have
been really tired. I know this is becauseI've cut down on my coffee consumption as
well,hoping that it will be just another good health move on my part. But also, drinking
coffee all day goes well with smoking, so I just decided I'd miss it that much less without the coffee. Why persecute myself
any more than I have to?

I've been cleaning my house thru the anxious moments.Whenever I get a nicotine urge that I can't deal with thru relaxation breathing & deep concentration,
I get the bucket I set up with ammonia & water in it, grab some paper towels, and start wiping something in my house down
with it. I mean the walls, the ceiling, the wood work - the windows, everything has a layer of yellow crud on it from the
cigarette smoke.

I showed my kids the yellow crud.They
were really concerned that thier lungs had yellow crud in them. I told them that I was very sorry if their lungs have been
clogged up with cigarette crud. I told them they would get better with time hopefully, like mine will. (feeling Justifiably Guilty on my part)

I've been having the most extremely horrible nightmares.It's almost like I've been exorcising all my demons from my life. Dream after dream,
even waking up for awhile & then going back to sleep doesn't stop the progressions. I'll go right back to the dream I
was having. The dreams are all horrible experiences I've actually had or similar to the ones I've had & also concern some
of the main traumatizing people in my life. I've been screaming, crying and tossing & turning thru all my sleeping hours.
I was afraid to go to sleeplast
night because these dreams have been so disturbing.

It's amazing what nicotine can do to your body & your mind. I'm feeling better,
alittle anyway. I don't miss the cigarette smell in the house.

My husband hasn't quit and claims he's not going to, but I've asked him to smoke
outside. He'll go along with that. I made the right choice this time... I quit smoking for me, not any other reason, I want
to smell better, feel better, look better, and be healthier than ever, I deserve it. My kids deserve it. My new grandchild,
Charlotte, deserves it!

kathleen

update: september 2006

my husband quit smoking. he had a heart attack
on september 17th. he had 2 arteries that were 90% blocked and a few others that were 30-40% blocked.

since he is active, healthy otherwise with no high blood pressure &
has no family history - smoking & diet are the reasons for his heart attack.

he had another heart attack 2 weeks later, even after having 2 stents put into
those two blocked arteries...

he is on several types of medication now that cost hundreds of dollars a month.
he is on that medication indefinetly. good thing we have insurance, but still - what if we lost that insurance? how would
be pay for those drugs?

kathleen

Health Hazards

Nicotineis highly addictive.
Nicotine provides an almost immediate “kick” because it causes a discharge of
epinephrine from the adrenal cortex. This stimulates the central nervous system& other endocrine glands, which causes a sudden release of glucose.

Stimulation is then followed bydepression& fatigue, leading the abuser to seek more nicotine.

Nicotineis absorbed readily from tobacco smoke in the lungs & it doesn't matter whether the tobacco smoke
is from cigarettes, cigars or pipes.Nicotine also is
absorbed readily when tobacco is chewed. With regular use of tobacco, levels of nicotine
accumulate inthe body during the day & persist overnight.
Thus, daily smokers or chewers are exposed to the effects of nicotine for 24 hours each
day.

Addictionto nicotine
results in withdrawal symptoms when a person tries to stop smoking. i.e., a study found that when chronic smokers were deprived of cigarettes for 24 hours, they had increased anger, hostility & aggression& loss of social cooperation.

Persons suffering from withdrawal also take longer to regain emotional equilibrium
following stress. During periods of abstinence &/or craving, smokers have shown impairment across a wide
range of psychomotor & cognitive functions, such as language comprehension.

Adolescent smokeless tobacco users are more likely than nonusers to become cigarette smokers. Behavioral research is beginning to explain
how social influences, such as observing adults or other peers smoking, affect whether adolescents begin to smoke cigarettes.

Research has shown that teens are generally resistant to anti-smoking messages.

In
addition to nicotine, cigarette smoke is primarily composed
of a dozen gases (mainly
carbon monoxide) & tar.
The tar in a cigarette, which varies from about 15 mg for a regular cigarette to 7 mg in a low-tar cigarette, exposes the
user to an increased risk of lung cancer, emphysema & bronchial disorders.

Scientists
now have pinpointed a particular molecule (the beta 2 (b2) subunit of the nicotine
cholinergic receptor) as a
critical component in nicotineaddiction.

Mice
that lack this subunit fail to self-administer nicotine, implying that without the
b2 subunit, the mice don't experience the positive reinforcing properties of nicotine. This newfinding identifies a potential
site for targeting the development of nicotineaddiction medications.

Other new research found that individuals
have greater resistance to nicotineaddiction if they have a genetic variant that decreases the function of the enzyme CYP2A6. The decrease in CYP2A6 slows the
breakdown of nicotine & protects individuals against nicotineaddiction.

Understanding
the role of this enzyme in nicotineaddiction gives a new target for developing more effective medications to help people stop smoking. Medications might be developed
that can inhibit the function of CYP2A6, thus providing a new approach to preventing & treating nicotineaddiction.

Another study found dramatic changes in the brain’s
pleasure circuits during withdrawal from chronic nicotine use. These changes are comparable
in magnitude & duration to similar changes observed during the withdrawal from other abused
drugs such as cocaine, opiates, amphetamines & alcohol.

Scientists
found significant decreases in the sensitivity of the brains of laboratory rats to pleasurable stimulation after nicotine administration was abruptly stopped. These changes lasted several days & may correspond to theanxiety & depression experienced by humans for several days after quitting smoking “cold turkey.”

The
results of this research may help in the development of better treatments for the withdrawal symptoms that may interfere with
individuals’ attempts to quit smoking.

Have you ever hada drink first thing in the morningto
steady your nerves or get rid of a hangover (Eye-opener)?

Two "yes" answers are considered a sign of possible problems
(2 yeses accurately identifies
80% of alcoholics).

Peele (1998) suggests asking yourself
"How much do I get out of drinking?" & compare this to "How much is drinkinghurtingme?"

If you conclude "I'd be better off if I drank less," then you
have a self-improvement project to work on. Westermeyer offers a Self-scoring Alcohol Check-up on his HabitSmart Site.

One of the nice features of this questionnaire
is that it'll help you identify some of your reasons for drinking. That information may help you
know where to focus yourself-helpefforts to reduce yourneedto drink.

Another evaluation of the seriousness of drinking
is used by the World Health Organization. A very similar test is at Screening Test but it also provides a quick interpretation
& some information about changing.

Getting
support from others: building contacts with
spouse & children, getting appreciation from co-workers, etc.

Note:self-treatment doesn't have to be complex. e.g., Linda Sobell
& her colleagues at Nova Southeastern Univ. (June, 2002) studied the effects
of bibliotherapy, much like the information given here, on drinking behavior.

These researchersmerely
sent:

written material
about the effects of alcohol

suggestions concerning
self-monitoring

ideas about lowering
the risks of drinking

motivational material
to people who answered an ad saying "I want to do something on my own about a drinking problem."

Following up 1 year later, they found these subjects were
consuming 20% fewer drinks, binging 33% less often & having 58% fewer negativeconsequences from drinking.

By the way, some of these subjects, who'd never sought
treatment before, did after trying tochangethemselves. The implications are that a public health / psychosocial educational approach could economically
help many problem drinkers who wouldn't seek the usual "clinical" approach, namely, waiting in denialuntil you deteriorate to the point of needingexpensive residential treatment for alcoholismfollowed
by a life-time of AA groups. (Note:
this study didn't measure how much self-change would have occurred if no information at all had been sent these subjects.)

If you'revery
addicted, however, you may need to go todetox, then get into
a residential treatment program, followed up by individual talking therapy & also an AA, Rational Recovery, or othersupport group listed below.

You'd be wise, even though some stop drinking on their own, to be in both therapy & a group because you
may need the group to stop or curtail your drinking & you may need the therapy to learn new constructive behaviors, attitudes, emotions, relationships &self-concepts.

Specifically use role playing to rehearse how to
handle invitations to "have a beer" or "come party with us." Practice handling tempting situations, e.g. when someone you're
withorders a drink.

Practice repeatedly exposing yourself to a favorite drink
for 30 minutes without drinking any of it, learning you can control this habit, then throw it away (Sitharthan, Sitharthan, Hough & Kavanagh, 1997). Most importantly, prepare carefully & in detail for possible lapses.

It's importantto realize that relapse rates are quite high even among addicts who have completed a professional
treatment program (remember
6 out of 7 drop out of such programs) & have received Relapse Prevention Treatment (plus perhaps attending AA).

It's very hard to maintain your
gains (as w/weight, once "clean" we may
"slack off" too much). However, Dimeff
& Marlatt (1998) found that relapse prevention training doesn't
prevent "slips" but reduces the harmful consequences of relapsing, enabling theaddictto get back on his / her feet faster.

take very seriously the
idea that other mental health problems may need to be dealt with in order to maintain your therapeutic or self-help produced gains

For hundreds of books about alcoholism
& 12-step (AA) programs write or link to Hazelden, Box 11, Center City, MN 55012. Yoder (1990) lists many recovery resources. Even the almost 60-year-old AA "bible," which has
helped millions, has been updated (J,
1996).

Most of the Hazelton books focus on chronic drinkers,
but actuallymore people are "problem drinkers,"i.e. have some problems due to drinking (arguments w/spouse or friends, late to work, hangovers, etc.) but aren't totally dependent onalcohol, yet.

Other researchers (Hester &Delaney, 1997) have developed & tested aProgram for Windows, a computer program which teaches self-control methods for problem drinkers. Although research is rare inself-help, the effectiveness of some of these books & programs have actually been published, e.g. Sobell &
Sobell, Sanchez-Craig, Miller & Hester.

If angerseems to be an important part of your addiction & precedes your relapses, see Clancy (1997) or Santoro & Cohen (1997). The books above are your best sources of adviceif
you're hopingto curtail your own drinking.

Some of the treatment manuals might serve as excellent guides for theself-helper,

Recently, a couple of studies have combined several sessions of
cognitive-behavioral treatment (aimed at controlling drinking) with a new drug, naltrexone, which supposedly
reduces the craving for alcohol.

One investigator, (Raymond Anton at Medical Univ. of South Carolina), reported the initial results as being more abstinence, fewer drinks
& fewer relapses (American Journal
of Psychiatry, 1999, 156, 1758-1764). Even
a cable TV network in California, Recovery Network, has been devoted to education & overcoming addictions. Things are changing (in response to the huge anticipated drug & alcohol problems).

Everyone seems to agree that support from an understanding group is helpful (although
Trimpey says it's not good to hang out with former drunks). Kishline (1995) has started a self-help group for problem-but-not-chronic drinkers; the
emphasis is on moderation, not on life-long disease & total abstinence (see her book for help in finding a non-AA group).

Several other alternatives groups, quite different from AA, have sprung up in the last 15-20 years.
They can be found at:

Professional psychologists (Santrock, Minnett, & Campbell, 1994)
in the early 90's considered Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (1990) by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services to be one of the best self-help books available, although the AA approach
was considered highly religious & almost "cultish" by many. (AA still helps far more than any other single method.)

Psychologists also approve of approaches very critical of AA, such
as The Truth about Addiction and Recovery (1991) by Stanton Peele & Archie Brodsky, When
AA Doesn't Work for You: Rational Steps to Quitting Alcohol (1992) by Albert Ellis & Emmett
Velton & Alcohol: How to Give It Up and Be Glad You Did (1994) by Philip Tate.

For general information, local treatment programs & referral
to AA call the Nat. Inst. on Drug Abuse & Alcoholism (800-662-HELP or 800-622-2255 or 301-468-2600).

Social supportclearly helps prevent relapse. However, even if you are in AA, it's important tothinkin terms of going beyond abstinence into learning betterself-esteem, control of emotions, ways of thinking, interpersonal skills & new areas of interest (O., 1998).

Spouses & children of alcoholicsshould
know about Al-Anon & Alateenwhich helprelatives
of alcoholics (also see White
or Yellow Pages for local numbers). Children of alcoholicsshould alsoknow aboutNACoA.

For parents of alcoholics, seeOur
Children are Alcoholics, from Islewest Press. There are many kinds of reactions to living in
anaddictive family; thus, in addition to behavioral approaches, there
are personal growth &insightapproaches (see
Black, 1987; Bradshaw, 1988, 1989; Gravitz & Bowen, 1986; Woititz, 1983).

Professional psychologists consider Claudia Black's (1981) It Will Never Happen to Me to be the best self-help book for children & spouses of alcoholics (Santrock, Minnett, & Campbell, 1994). Obviously, there's an enormous amount of information & helpful resources for dealing withaddictions & potential addictions.

But the best news is that you begin healing right
away. In fact, the healthieryour new lifestyle, the faster you’ll heal.
You can heal most of your cells that have been damaged, at least to some degree. But the biggest thing you have going
for you is your body’s replacement policy.

Your body creates new cells every day, about300 to 400 million perday!These new
cells replace old & dying cells. When you stop using drugs, the new cells your body
creates will not be “drug-addicted”cells.

They’ll never have experienced drugs. These new cells will be healthy, especiallyif you continue to follow a healthy diet & lifestyle.

Scientists say that every 7 years the body replaces
every cell (except
nerve cells) at least once.That means that the body renewsitself
& becomes a newconglomeration of cells, a new you, every 7 years!

This new you beginsevery day. If you pay attention, you can feel it.

Internet Addiction

More & more people are finding themselves spending excessive time on the Internet. This becomes a problem
when it interferes with relationships or other areas of everyday life.

i.e.,Internet addiction may be a problem
when it interferes with important work or with family activities.

Some research suggests
that Internet addiction may actually involve several, more specific addictions,
such as:

addiction
to online relationships

to cybersex
(online sex)

to online gaming.

Internet addiction & the various problems related to it often have damaging effects on intimate relationships, as evidence by increased incidence of cyber-affairs (online affairs).

As with other types of addiction, Internet addiction
is best defined by an inability to cut down on use despite costly negative consequences.

Internet
addiction is a new affliction for human-kind.
With millions of people around the world, including 60 million Americans, logging onto the Internet, there's bound to be some
addiction.

Like workaholism, Internet “addiction”
isn't using the Internet for many hours of work & pleasure. To be an addict, as I'm
using the term, the logging on has to cause problems, such as in the 5% to 8% who become so “hooked”
that they spend almost all their spare time online, even going without sleep.

Other Internet users (about 15% of total Internet users & far more men than women)
become attracted to pornography online, some of them spend a lot of time & money being a voyeur & avoiding real relationships. (Keep in mind that about 80% of Internet users are married, committed, or dating someone.)

Some young people spend hours with interactive computer games. All this time spent online reduces the time available
for face to face relationships, for productive work & learning & for recreation / leisure / physical activities.

Therapists working in this area observe that addicts frequently deny any problem until confronted with a personal crisis, like doing poorly in school, getting caught misusing a computer at work,
or facing criticism from a partner.

If you spend more than a couple of hours per day on the Internet playing games, flirting, or seeking sexual-pleasure,
you should ask yourself if this is the best use of your time.

Probably thousands of married
people have had emotionally involved “affairs” online, some even sneaked out to rendezvous. When caught, these
online relationships can devastate a marriage.

Another survey of Internet users (Cooper, Scherer,
Boies & Gordon, 1999) also found that the people who frequently logged onto sex-oriented sites often have psychological problems & stress, including running risks to real relationships.

However, these authors believe occasional visits to sex or flirtation sites may be harmless entertainment for most people. Yet, they say that the 8% of
heaviest users of such sites (11+ hours/week) may be harmed, primarily by exacerbating their
sexual compulsions.

The study also noted that about 60% of the respondents using sex related
sites didn’t tell the truth about their age, almost 40% had pretended to be a different race & 75% kept secret how much time they spent on such sites
while denying any guilt about the activity.

For those of you interested
in more information about the connection between pornography & sexual activities or acting-out, see Dr. Cline's powerful statement. The Surgeon General's Office has
also produced an unclear report on the effects of pornography (the scientists on the commission
disagreed with each other).

Not all researchersbelieve that pornography is a consistant cause of sexual aggression. Often aggressive tendencies are seen before the offender
started looking an pornography (Seto, Maric & Barbaree, 2001, in Aggression & Violent
Behavior, 35-53); likewise, the offender had often been abused himself as a child before he got access to pornography,
so we don't know for sure what the primary causes are.

Keep in mind, too, that
many writers of the material cited in this section are therapists or evaluators working with addicts
who've gotten into deep psychological, interpersonal or legal trouble because of sexual
addiction.

These writers have found
& report that people who cheat on their spouses, who abuse children, who rape don't restrain themselves from looking at
pornography. No surprise there. What we don't know for sure, yet, is if there are avid viewers of pornography who never mistreat
or abuse anyone... & who have good healthy sex lives & loving relationships. If such people exist, we don't have professional
experts writing about that group yet.

A psychiatrist, Dr. Kimberly
Young (1998; 2001), has done a 3 year study of Internet addiction,
written 2 or more books & developed a Web site, Center for On-line Addiction. The Web site is mostly ads for her books & services
but there's a test for Internet addiction there.

Her focus in her first
book is on who gets hooked, why & how & what can be done about various kinds of addiction.
She, like other investigators, believes that persons with psychiatric histories seek out newsgroups, forums, chat rooms, or interactive games hoping for relief, but the old emotional problems lead to Internet addiction.

Her more recent book is
about cybersex & provides more specific steps to extricate oneself from porn & affairs. Another book (Gwinnell, 1999) focuses more specifically on the seductive falling-in-love experience of some Net addicts.

Both of the above authors
& Dr. Orzack at the Internet Addiction Services recommend keeping careful records of your time online, setting time limits for the pornography or in chat groups, cutting back on email lists, rewarding keeping to the schedule & so on.

Success is reported in 6 to 8 therapy sessions, but some ex-addicts state that total abstinence
from their online temptations were necessary for them; otherwise, like the ex-smoker, one brief experience hooks them again.

As one relapsing
addict commented, “...I thought I had broken the compulsive habit, but once I returned to my favorite sites, I immediately experienced the same “buzz”
and “high” that had lead me into difficulty...” Some people will just have to stay completely away from
parts of the Internet.

I would caution you, however, that even some of the writers in this area, including
Young (1998), seem to feel negative about online relationships, implying that trustworthy, intimate, devoted friends must be face to face (what about letter writers & phone callers?).

Dr. John Grohol writes about this bias in his (MHN Internet Addiction) review of Dr. Young’s book. To the contrary, one reason
why people are attracted to the Internet is so they can get & give:

Psychologists debate whether
people can have an addiction to pornography.

In November 2004, a panel of experts testified
before a Senate subcommittee that a product which millions of Americans consume is dangerously addictive. They were talking
about pornography.

The effects of porn on the brain were called "toxic" and compared
to cocaine. One psychologist claimed "prolonged exposure to pornography stimulates a preference for depictions of group sex,
sadomasochistic practices, and sexual contact with animals."

It used to be that if you wanted to see pornography, you had to go
out and buy a magazine or rent a video. Store hours and available space under the mattress placed some limits on people's
porn habits.

Now there are an estimated 420 million adult web pages online. "For the person who has difficulty
stopping, more is only one click away," says sex therapist Louanne Cole Weston, PhD.

There's no doubt that some people's porn consumption gets them in trouble -- in the form of
maxed-out credit cards, lost sleep, neglected responsibilities, or neglected loved ones. But Weston is one who takes issue
with calling problem behavior involving porn an addiction. "'Compulsive' is more appropriate," she tells WebMD.

Compulsion or Addiction

The difference between describing the behavior as a compulsion or an addiction is subtle, but
important.

Erick Janssen, PhD, a researcher at the Kinsey Institute, criticizes the use of the term addiction
when talking about porn because he says it merely describes certain people's behavior as being addiction-like, but treating
them as addicts may not help them.

Many people may diagnose themselves as porn addicts after reading popular books on the subject,
he says. But mental health professionals have no standard criteria to diagnose porn addiction.

Mary Anne Layden, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, was one of the witnesses
at the Senate hearing on pornography addiction. She says the same criteria used to diagnose problems like pathological gambling
and substance abuse can be applied to problematic porn use.

"The therapists who treat pornography addicts say they behave just like any other addicts,"
she tells WebMD.

One of the key features of addiction, she says, is the development of a tolerance to the addictive
substance. In the way that drug addicts need increasingly larger doses to get high, she thinks porn addicts need to see more
and more extreme material to feel the same level of excitement they first experienced.

"Most of the addicts will say, well, here's the stuff I would never look at, it's so disgusting
I would never look at it, whatever that is -- sex with kids, sex with animals, sex involving feces," she says. "At some point
they often cross over."

Janssen disputes that people who look at porn typically progress in such a way. "There is absolutely
no evidence to support that," he tells WebMD.

Porn in the USA: thanks to the nerds who created the Internet, you no longer need to
visit the adult bookstore incognito to get your smut on. But is easily accessible porn a good thing?

Men's Fitness, Nov,
2004 by Greg Melville

"BOB" 31, DIDN'T REALIZE he
had a porn problem. Until it cost him his wife.

His fixation
began with softcore magazines when he was a teenager & grew slowly. But it didn't become a full-blown addiction until he discovered Internet pornography, by which time
he had already gotten married & had a young daughter. "I started isolating myself-because I wanted to spend time on the
computer," he recalls. "My waking hours were ruled by it. Porn dominated my life:

Sometimes he'd pull exhausting
all-nighters surfing the Web for raunchy material, leaving him bleary-eyed the next day & barely
able to accomplish anything at his job as an Internet marketing specialist in California.

Soon Bob became distant from his spouse & communication started breaking down, putting a strain on his marriage. His wife told him he had a sexual addiction. But he paid no attention & she eventually left him.

Bob's case may be extreme,
but it's not altogether uncommon. Today, nearly 75% of U.S. households have Internet access. Translation: 3/4 of American homes can download porn. Roughly 1/4 of all Web searches are porn-related
& porn sites (of which 1,000 new ones are created daily)
receive millions of hits each day. Porn itself has become a multibillion-dollar industry.

"Now you can get [porn] in the privacy, of your own home, without sanction;' says Julie Albright, Ph.D., a researcher on Internet sex & a sociologist at the University of Southern California. "Imagine a schoolteacher being
seen walking into the town's triple-X bookstore-- the ultimate taboo. Now he doesn't have to."

This easy access is making
sex addiction much more common, some psychologists say. They claim that adult entertainment can
impact society negatively by hindering men's relationships with women & leading to obsessive, self-destructive behavior.
A study published in Professional Psychology found that as many as 7.1% of men now say they spend up to 30 hours a week surfing
for porn.

Porn-industry sources counter
that the rapid growth of porn is merely the result of meeting demand. They also claim that pornography can serve as a healthy
release & provide greater intimacy, between men & women.

Both are probably right -
which is why the issue can be so confusing.

THE RISE OF PORN

People have craved sexually
explicit distractions practically since cave dwellers first took charcoal to a rock wall. In ancient Greek times, they turned
to pornographos - "writing about prostitutes: These days, Webster's defines pornography as "sexually explicit pictures, writing,
or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal."

The current boom in adult
entertainment can be traced to the late 1960s and early '70s, when porn was legalized in Denmark
& stag movies motivated American men to buy home projectors & hang sheets in their basements. Breakthrough films such
as Deep Throat (1972) & Debbie Does Dallas (1978)
put X-rated awareness on the mainstream map - & drew the ire of the feminist movement, which argued that adult films objectified
women.

During the '80s, the advent
of video made producing adult movies cheaper and allowed people to watch them discreetly at home. And now, since the popularization
of the Web in the mid-'90s, access has never been easier. Broadband Internet and on-demand video have practically made porn
an upstanding member of pop culture. Today Jenna Jameson can share talk-show couch time with Jennifer Aniston.

Adam Glasser, a porn star/director
known professionally as Seymore Butts, says the reason adult entertainment hit the mainstream is simple: Sex sells. Producers
of the stuff are simply feeding demand. "Even on broadcast TV, people are trying to find creative ways to titillate the audience;
he notes. "Now you can see Dennis Franz's ass or, on Joe Millionaire, captions like 'slurp, slurp:"

Glasser is regarded as a trailblazer
in the "gonzo porn" genre - adult movies with almost zero plot (meaning
millions of men no longer have to wear down their fast-forward button). He also stars in Family Business, the Showtime
reality show that chronicles his life in the porn biz. "Sex wouldn't be so available if people didn't want it," he adds.

THE PORN IDENTITY

But it was just such easy
availability that ultimately did Bob in. "The Internet was really the downfall for me," he says. "My senses dulled, &
I stopped focusing on my day-to-day life. I gave up my interests, my friendships: With his marriage over, "All of a sudden,
I woke up & saw my life in ruins."

"Weston, who runs no-porn.com,
a Web discussion board for sex addicts that receives more than 1,000 visitors daily, says he, too,
found the Internet irresistible. "I even downloaded porn at work," he recalls, "which is professional suicide. I was never
fired, or even accused of using porn, but I wasn't as valuable to my company as I could have been."

His situation at home also
deteriorated. "I felt like I was living a secret life; he says. "As a father, I was distant & demanding. The irony is
I thought I was a great husband & father. I've learned that I was mistaken."

These experiences follow an
almost textbook story line for sexual addiction. What begins with mild curiosity snowballs into such an obsession that addicts start isolating themselves, falling deeper into their dependency.

Sex addiction typically begins
when the individual has specific sexual experiences that form his sexual-arousal template. "They create a life based around
secrecy & shame" says Charlie Walker, Ph.D., vice president of operations at the CompassPoint Addiction Foundation, a research center which
specializes in treating various addictions, in Scottsdale, Ariz.

"They don't need anyone else
for gratification." Addicts also constantly try to up the ante each time they indulge. Sexual
compulsivity is typically a disease that escalates over time. "It's like when someone starts off needing a beer a days
adds Walker, "then works up to a whole case: They experience a continuing escalation in their behaviors, becoming desensitized
to images that were once stimulating.

The sex addict requires increasingly
more provocative pictures in the same way the alcoholicneeds to increase his intake to get the same feeling.

This isn't to say that everyone
who enjoys porn is destined to become an addict. "There are people who use
pornography as part of their arousals says Walker, "but it doesn't become an organizing principle of their sexuality
- just like there are people who can drink responsibly:

Glasser claims his movies
can actually be sexual aids for couples. "People can learn not only about technique, but they learn about their bodies in
general," he says. "I get letters from people all the time thanking me for helping open their eyes about their sexuality."
He cites one such letter from a woman married 27 years, whose husband, after watching a Seymore Butts film, "finally found
her G-spot?"

James, a 33-year-old from
D.C., says he uses adult movies - on video & downloaded from the Internet - as foreplay; "On
occasion, my wife & I like to watch porn to intensify our sexual experience;" he says. "It's
a quick way to get aroused, or even get us back on track for round two."

Glasser argues that there's
a problem when guys watch adult videos & don't tell their significant others - a sign of relationship issues that run
deeper than an interest in porn.

"You've got to ask, Why does this guy feel like
he's forced to watch it behind closed doors? That's a problem right there. Communicating about sex & sexuality is almost
as important as having sex regularly with someone you love."

True, but the reality is that porn is mostly a guy thing. According to the Web resource Internet Filter Review, 72% of" all visitors
to porn sites are male. And if a guy does communicate with his girlfriend or wife about porn
& she wants no part of it, he may very well continue to watch in secret.

PORN-FREE

For guys whose obsessions
become too difficult to manage, new sex-addiction treatment groups are more widely available. I. David Marcus, a psychotherapist
in San Jose, Calif., says anyone who spends several hours a week pornicating should question whether he's becoming dependent.

Take away the temptation by
installing SPA-M-blockers for your e-mail, he says & software that'll log you off the Web after an hour or two. If the
problem spirals out of control, talk to a friend, seek help, or attend a group session like Sex Addicts Anonymous (sexaa.org). However you do it, get away from that computer & take back your life.

Bob finally reds
like he has come to terms with his addiction. "I realized pornography
wasn't my friend anymore," he says.

He sought counseling & joined a 12-step group for sex addicts. Now he has a new job & a "zero-tolerance policy" for himself regardingporn. "I'm just more focused on my goals in life," he says. "I have far more self-respect. I have the shame of the past, but I don't carry the shame & guilt of that lifestyle any longer."

STUCK ON SMUT?

Are you a porn
addict? Find out: Close that issue of Happy Mammaries, get your right hand off the mouse, your left hand out
of your pants & take this quiz (adapted from "The Sex Addiction Screening Test" by Patrick
Carnes. Ph.D.).

This test isn't a substitute
for a complete assessment from a professional therapist versed in treating sexually compulsive behaviors. For the original
test. visit sexhelp.com

If you answered "yes" to 4 or more of these statements, consider seeking professional treatment from a therapist trained in treating sexually compulsive behaviors. For a national database of these therapists & a variety of other addiction resources, visit compasspointaf.org.

Contributor Greg Melville teaches journalism at St. Michael's College in Burlington. Vt.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Weider PublicationsCOPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

Addiction to porn destroying lives, Senate told

Connie Cass, Associated Press Writer / Thursday, November 18, 2004

Comparing pornography to heroin, researchers on Thursday called on Congress to finance
studies on "porn addiction" & launch a public health campaign about the dangers.

"We're so afraid to talk about sex in our society that we really give carte blanche to the people who are producing this kind of material,"
said James B. Weaver, a Virginia Tech professor who studies the impact of pornography.

Internet pornography is corrupting
children & hooking adults into an addiction that threatens their jobs & families, a panel of anti-porn advocates told the hearing organized by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., chairman
of the Commerce subcommittee on science.

Brownback, a father of 5,
said when he was a boy, the typical kid's exposure was limited to occasional peeks at dirty magazines illicitly obtained by a buddy.

Now, he said, pornographyseems pervasive. Children run across it while researching homework on the Internet.
Vulgar ads arrive unexpectedly by e-mail. Some of his middle-age male friends limit their time alone in hotel rooms to avoid the temptation of graphic pay-per-view movies, Brownback said.

Mary Anne Layden, co-director
of a sexual trauma program at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, saidpornography's effect on the brain mirrors addiction to heroin or crack cocaine.
She told of one patient, a business executive, who arrived at his office at 9 a.m. each day, logged ontoInternet porn sites & didn't log off until 5 p.m.

The panel discussion ranged
from hardcore, violent pornography to audience complaints about a sexually suggestive promo
that aired prior to this week's "Monday Night Football" game.

Brownback, an outspoken Christian
conservative who has championed efforts to curb indecency on television & the Internet, said the public is beginning to
realize "they don't just have to take it."

But he acknowledged the First Amendment right to free speech has limited congressional efforts.

In June, the Supreme Court
blocked a law designed to shield Web-surfing children frompornography, ruling that requiring adults to register or use access codes before viewing objectionable material
would infringe on their rights.

Weaver acknowledged that research "directly assessing the impact of pornography addiction on families &
communities is rather limited."

But he pointed to studies
that show prolonged use of pornography leads to "sexual callousness, the erosion of family values & diminished sexual satisfaction."

Judith Reisman, a vocal
critic of the Kinsey Institute & the field of sexology, suggested Congress require police officers to gather evidence
of pornography at crime scenes to further research.

Pornography Is A Left Issue

by Gail Dines & Robert Jensen / December 06, 2005

Anti-pornography feminists
get used to insults from the left. Over & over we're told that we're anti-sex, prudish, simplistic, politically na´ve, diversionary & narrow-minded. The cruder critics don't hesitate to suggest that the cure for these ailments lies in,
how shall we say, a robust sexual experience.

In addition to the slurs,
we constantly face a question:

Why do we "waste" our time
on the pornography issue?

Since we're anti-capitalist
& anti-empire leftists as well as feminists, shouldn't we focus on the many political, economic & ecological crises
(war, poverty, global warming, etc.)? Why would we spend part of our intellectual &
organizing energies over the past 2 decades pursuing the feminist critique of pornography & the sexual exploitation industry?

The answer is simple:

We're anti-pornography precisely because we're
leftists as well as feminists.

As leftists, we reject the sexism & racism that saturates contemporary mass-marketed pornography.

As leftists, we reject the capitalist commodification of one of the most basic aspects of our humanity.

Anti-pornography feminists
aren't asking the left to accept a new way of looking at the world but instead are arguing for consistency in analysis & application of principles.

It'as always seemed strange
to us that so many on the left consistently refuse to engage in a sustained & thoughtful critique of pornography. All this is particularly unfortunate at a time when the left is flailing to find traction with the
public; a critique of pornography, grounded in a radical feminist & left analysis that counters right-wing moralizing,
could be part of an effective organizing strategy.

Left media analysis

Leftists examine mass media
as one site where the dominant class attempts to create & impose definitions & explanations of the world. We know
news isn't neutral, that entertainment programs are more than just fun & games. These are places where ideology is reinforced,
where the point of view of the powerful is articulated. That process is always a struggle; attempts to define the world by dominant classes can be & are, resisted.

The term "hegemony" is typically
used to describe that always-contested process, the way in which the dominant class attempts to secure control over the construction of meaning.

The feminist critique of pornography
is consistent with & for many of us, grows out of - a widely accepted analysis on the left of ideology, hegemony & media, leading to the observation that pornography is to patriarchy what
commercial television is to capitalism.

Yet when pornography is the topic,
many on the left seem to forget Gramsci's theory of hegemony & accept the pornographer's self-serving argument that pornography is mere fantasy.

Apparently the commonplace
left insight that mediated images can be tools for legitimizing inequality holds true for an analysis of CBS or CNN, but evaporates when
the image is of a woman having a penis thrust into her throat with such force that she gags.

In that case, for unexplained
reasons, we aren't supposed to take pornographic representations seriously or view them as carefully constructed products
within a wider system of gender, race & class inequality.

The valuable work conducted by media critics on the politics of production apparently holds no weight for pornography.

Pornography is fantasy, of
a sort. Just as television cop shows that assert the inherent nobility of police & prosecutors as protectors of the people
are fantasy. Just as the Horatio Alger stories about hard work's rewards in capitalism are fantasy. Just as films that cast
Arabs only as terrorists are fantasy.

All those media products are
critiqued by leftists precisely because the fantasy world they create is a distortion of the actual world in which we live.
Police & prosecutors do sometimes seek justice, but they also enforce the rule of the powerful.

Individuals in capitalism
do sometimes prosper as a result of their hard work, but the system doesn't provide everyone who works hard with a decent
living. Some tiny number of Arabs are terrorists, but that obscures both the terrorism of the powerful in white America & the humanity of the vast majority of Arabs.

Such fantasies also reflect
how those in power want subordinated people to feel. Images of happy blacks on the plantations made whites feels more secure & self-righteous in their oppression of slaves.

Images of contented workers
allay capitalists' fears of revolution. And men deal with their complex feelings about contemporary masculinity's toxic mix of sex & aggression by seeking images of women who enjoy pain & humiliation.

Why do so many on the left
seem to assume that pornographers operate in a different universe than other capitalists?

Why would pornography be the
only form of representation produced & distributed by corporations that wouldn't be a vehicle to legitimize inequality?

Why would the pornographers
be the only media capitalists who are rebels seeking to subvert hegemonic systems?

Why do the pornographers get
a free ride from so much of the left?

After years of facing the
left's hostility in public & print, we believe the answer is obvious:

Sexual desire can constrain people's capacity for critical reason - especially in men in patriarchy, where sex isn't only about pleasure
but about power.

Leftists - especially left
men - need to get over the obsession with getting off.

Let's analyze pornography
not as sex, but as media. Where would that lead?

Corporate media

Critiques of the power of commercial corporate media are ubiquitous on the left. Leftists with vastly different political projects can come together
to decry conglomerates' control over news & entertainment programming. Because of the structure of the system, it's a given that these corporations create
programming that meets the needs of advertisers & elites, not ordinary people.

Yet when discussing pornography,
this analysis flies out the window. Listening to many on the left defend pornography, one would think the material is being made by struggling artists tirelessly working in lonely garrets to help us understand the mysteries of sexuality. Nothing could be further from the truth; the pornography industry is just that - an industry, dominated by the pornography production companies that create the material,
with mainstream corporations profiting from its distribution.

It's easy to listen in on
pornographers' conversations - they have a trade magazine, Adult Video News. The discussions there don't tend to focus on
the transgressive potential of pornography or the polysemic nature of sexually explicit texts. It's about - what a surprise!
- profits. The magazine's stories don't reflect a critical consciousness about much of anything, especially gender, race &
sex.

Andrew Edmond - president
& CEO of Flying Crocodile, a $20 million pornography internet company - put it bluntly:

"A lot of people get distracted from the business model by [the sex]. It's just as sophisticated & multilayered as any other market place. We operate
just like any Fortune 500 company."

The production companies -
from big players such as Larry Flynt Productions to small fly-by-night operators - act predictably as corporations in capitalism,
seeking to maximize market-share & profit. They don't consider the needs of people or the effects of their products, any more than other capitalists. Romanticizing the pornographers makes as much
sense as romanticizing the executives at Viacom or Disney.

Increasingly, mainstream media
corporations profit as well. Hugh Hefner & Flynt had to fight to gain respectability within the halls of capitalism, but today many of the pornography profiteers are big corporations. Thru ownership of cable
distribution companies & Internet services, the large companies that distribute pornography also distribute mainstream
media. One example is News Corp. owned by Rupert Murdoch.

News Corp. is a major owner
of DirecTV, which sells more pornographic films than Flynt. In 2000, the New York Times reported that nearly $200 million
a year is spent by the 8.7 million subscribers to DirecTV. Among News Corp.'s other media holdings are the Fox broadcasting
& cable TV networks, Twentieth Century Fox, the New York Post & TV Guide.

Welcome to synergy: Murdoch
also owns HarperCollins, which published pornography star Jenna Jameson's best-selling book How To Make Love Like A Porn Star.

When Paul Thomas accepted his best-director award at the pornography industry's 2005 awards ceremony, he commented on the corporatization of the industry
by joking: "I used to get paid in cash by Italians. Now I get paid with a check by a Jew." Ignoring the crude ethnic references
(Thomas works primarily for Vivid, whose head is Jewish), his point was that what was once
largely a mob-financed business is now just another corporate enterprise.

How do leftists feel about
corporate enterprises? Do we want profit-hungry corporative executives constructing our culture?

Commodification

It's long been understood on the left that one of the most insidious aspects of capitalism is the commodification of everything. There is nothing that
can't be sold in the capitalist game of endless accumulation.

In pornography, the stakes
are even higher; what is being commodified is crucial to our sense of self. Whatever a person's sexuality or views on sexuality, virtually everyone agrees it's an important aspect of our identity.
In pornography & in the sex industry more generally, sexuality is one more product to be packaged & sold.

When these concerns are raised, pro-pornography leftists often rush to explain that the women in pornography have chosen that work. Although
any discussion of choice must take into consideration the conditions under which one chooses, we don't dispute that women
do choose & as feminists we respect that choice & try to understand it.

But, to the best of our knowledge,
no one on the left defends capitalist media - or any other capitalist enterprise - by pointing out workers consented to do
their jobs. The people who produce media content, or any other product, consent to work in such enterprises, under varying
constraints & opportunities. So what?

The critique isn't of the
workers, but of the owners & structure.

Look at the industry's biggest star,
Jenna Jameson, who appears to control her business life. However in her book she reports that she was raped as a teenager & describes the ways in which men
in her life pimped her. Her desperation for money also comes thru when she tried to get a job as a stripper but looked too
young - she went into a bathroom & pulled off her braces with pliers. She also describes drug abuse & laments the many friends in the industry she lost to drugs.

And this is the woman said
to have the most power in the pornography industry.

As we understand left analysis,
the focus isn't on individual decisions about how to survive in a system that commodifies everything & takes from us meaningful
opportunities to control our lives. It's about fighting a system.

Racism

As the most blatant &
ugly forms of racism have disappeared from mainstream media, leftists have continued to point out that subtler forms of racism
endure & that their constant reproduction thru media is a problem.

Race matters & media depictions
of race matter.

Pornography is the one media
genre in which overt racism is still acceptable. Not subtle, coded racism, but old-fashioned U.S. racism - stereotypical representations of the black male stud, the animalistic
black woman, the hot Latina, the demure Asian geisha. Pornography vendors have a special category, "interracial," which allows
consumers to pursue the various combinations of racialized characters & racist scenarios.

The racism of the industry
is so pervasive that it goes largely unnoticed. In an interview with the producer of the DVD "Black Bros & Asian Ho's,"
one of us asked if he ever was criticized for the racism of such films. He said, "No, they are very popular." We repeated
the question: Popular, yes, but do people ever criticize the racism? He looked incredulous; the question apparently had never
entered his mind.

Yet take a tour of a pornography
shop & it's clear that racial justice isn't central to the industry. Typical is the claim of "Black Attack Gang Bang"
films:

"My mission is to find the
cutest white honeys to get Gang Banged by some hard pipe hitting niggas straight outta compton!"

It would be interesting to
see a pro-pornography leftist argue to a non-white audience that such films are unrelated to the politics of race & white
supremacy.

Up-market producers such as
Vivid use mainly white women; the official face of pornography is overwhelmingly white. However, alongside this genre there
exists more aggressive material in which women of color appear more frequently. As one black woman in the industry told us, "This is a racist business,"
from how she is treated by producers to pay differentials to the day-to-day conversations she overhears on the set.

Sexism

Contemporary mass-marketed
heterosexual pornography - the bulk of the market for sexually explicit material - is one site where a particular meaning
of sex & gender is created & circulated. Pornography's central ideological message isn't hard to discern: Women exist
for the sexual pleasure of men, in whatever form men want that pleasure, no matter what the consequences for women. It's not
just that women exist for sex, but that they exist for the sex that men want.

Despitena´ve (or disingenuous) claims about pornography as a vehicle for women's sexual liberation,
the bulk of mass-marketed pornography is incredibly sexist. From the ugly language used to describe women, to the positions
of subordination, to the actual sexual practices themselves - pornography is relentlessly misogynistic. As the industry "matures"
the most popular genre of films, called "gonzo," continues to push the limits of degradation of & cruelty toward, women. Directors acknowledge they aren't sure where to take it from the current level.

This misogyny isn't an idiosyncratic
feature of a few fringe films. Based on 3 studies of the content of mainstream video/DVD pornography over the past decade,
we conclude that woman-hating is central to contemporary pornography.

Take away every video in which
a woman is called a bitch, a cunt, a slut, or a whore & the shelves would be nearly bare. Take away every DVD in which
a woman becomes the target of a man's contempt & there wouldn't be much left. Mass-marketed pornography doesn't celebrate
women & their sexuality, but instead expresses contempt for women & celebrates the charge of expressing that contempt
sexually.

Leftists typically reject crude biological explanations for inequality. But the story of gender in pornography is the story of biological determinism.
A major theme in pornography is that women are different from men & enjoypain, humiliation, degradation; they don't deserve the same humanity as men because they're a different kind of creature.

In pornography, it's not just
that women want to get *&%@_( in degrading fashion, but that they need it. Pornography ultimately tells stories about where women belong - underneath men.

Most leftists critique patriarchy
& resist the system of male dominance. Gender is one of those arenas of struggle against domination & hence an arena
of ideological struggle. Put an understanding of media together with feminist arguments for sexual equality & you get the anti-pornography argument.

Leftists who otherwise pride themselves on analyzing systems & structures of power, can turn into extreme libertarian individualists on the subject of pornography. The sophisticated, critical thinking that underlies the best of left politics can give way to simplistic, politically na´ve & diversionary analysis that leaves
far too many leftists playing cheerleader for an exploitive industry.

In those analyses, we aren't
supposed to examine the culture's ideology & how it shapes people's perceptions of their choices & we must ignore the conditions under which people live; it's all about an individual's choice.

A critique of pornography
doesn't imply that freedom rooted in an individual's ability to choose isn't important, but argues instead that these issues can't be reduced to that single moment of choice of an individual. Instead, we have
to ask: What is meaningful freedom within a capitalist system that is racist & sexist?

Leftists have always challenged the contention of the powerful that freedom comes in accepting one's place in a hierarchy. Feminists have highlighted that one of the systems of power that constrains us is gender.

We contend that leftists who
take feminism seriously must come to see that pornography, along with other forms of sexualized exploitation - primarily of women, girls & boys, by men - in capitalism is inconsistent with a world in which ordinary people can
take control of their own destinies.

That is the promise of the
left, of feminism, of critical race theory, of radical humanism - of every liberatory movement in modern history.

Do you often find that
you involve yourself in relationships that disappoint you?

Are you not getting what
you need & desire from the people you choose to date?

Does there always seem
to be something missing? If you answered yes to one or all of those questions, you could very well be addicted to disappointing & bad relationships, setting yourself up for failure without even knowing it.

There are ways you can
determine whether you're addicted or not & ways you can break the addiction & start getting what you have always wanted from a relationship.

Before we cover the symptoms
of addiction, it is important that we cover the dangers of staying in a bad relationship. Since bad relationships lack
what one or both partners’ need, stress becomes a regular part of your life, as well a gradual lowering of your self-esteem,
which will make you unable to focus on your career and personal life with the concentration and care needed, in order for
you to be happy. The constant stress will produce chemical changes in your body that drain your energy and make you more eligible
for physical illnesses. Physical abuse in a relationship is obvious to cause a lot of physical harm, along with great psychological
damage, but in spite of these facts, many people still choose to proceed with such relationships, finding themselves trapped
and incapable of leaving. They find themselves depressed, on a search for some relief and unfortunately becoming depressed
and possibly turning to drugs and alcohol.

So what are the symptoms of this addiction?
Ignoring the truth would be one. If you truly know that the relationship you are in is making you unhappy but make no effort
to exit from it, then you are in denial and are holding yourself hostage in a situation you do not have to be in. Making excuses
for your partner’s disappointing and bad behavior will keep you trapped and is another huge symptom of bad relationship
addiction, especially if the excuses you produce do not back up the facts and are unrealistic. If you do finally build up
the courage to confront your partner to leave him or her but are overcome with fear and therefore back off from the confrontation,
you are a high and sure victim of addiction because no matter what you attempt, you find yourself always giving in and holding
on to what you know is bad for you. Suffering from both physical and mental discomfort once broken up, unless you get back
together, is yet another symptom of addiction and should not be denied or ignored.

What causes addiction to bad relationships?There are several levels & everyone’s addiction is different & varies.
One common reason is the feeling & belief that if you end the relationship, you'll never find anyone else who could possibly
be interested in you or love you.

You grow so attached to your partner that you forgot
your life before him or her, making you feel fearful of being on your own and taking care of yourself. Fear of criticism is
another reason many people remain in bad relationships. They are afraid of what people will say, believing that ending a relationship
means that they are a failure and being alone is unacceptable and terrifying. Other reasons may be financial support that
you are receiving from a partner, making you feel that you should tolerate bad behavior from your lover, since they are supporting
you. Having a child together can also blind you or cause you to deny a bad relationship, making you feel guilty for leaving
your child’s mother or father. On a deeper level, you could be addicted to disappointing and bad relationships due to
your upbringing or experiences as a child yourself. Perhaps you were not nurtured or loved enough and you now think it is
normal to be neglected from love, care and understanding.

What should you do and how can you break a bad relationship
addiction? Since this addiction is difficult and basically impossible for you to end on your own, counseling would be the
best assistance for you. Find a counselor or service in which experts provide their services through, and take that first
step in accepting the fact that you have an addiction and that you need and want help to conquer it. Start being a best friend
to yourself and open the door to all the feelings you have kept locked up for so long. Stay focused and encourage yourself
frequently by setting a goal, and picturing yourself away from all the disappointment and closer to all the happiness and
good health you need, desire and deserve as a person. Never give up and know that you are not alone. There are people who
can help you, know how to help and will help you. Mainly, keep in mind that there will always be a person who will be by your
side and never leave you, always giving you the strength, love and support you need…and that person is YOU.

Sex Addiction

People who become involved in excessive sexual activity or who have a constant preoccupation w/sex may have a sex addiction.
Addicted individuals make getting sex or sexual stimulation the center of their lives, at the cost of relationships, career
or health.

As w/any addiction, sex addiction becomes a problem when it interferes with important areas of life. Sex addicts may
be in total denial that they have a problem, even if addiction is ruining their lives.

Increase the
frequency of sexual activities to more intense levels in order to achieve previous levels of excitement & relief

Sexual
addiction: is very hard to define. There's a thin
line between the normal & the abnormal. For example, thinking about sex a lot, say many times every day, isn't ordinarily considered an addiction (maybe an obsession) but spending several hours a week looking at pictures of nudes may well be an addiction.
Is the average young male who masturbates 3 or 4 times a week addicted?

Probably not; if he had an alternative, the masturbation would stop. If a loving couple have good sex twice a day, morning & night, is that an addiction? Probably not, but if that's their only way of being reassured that they're sexy &/or loved & then one decides he/she doesn't want it so often but the other can't stop, then he or she is addicted.

If someone masturbates twice a day, is that an addiction? Maybe
not, but if that's their only way of imagining or gaining intimacy with another human being, then they might be considered addicted.

Addiction isn't just a matter of frequency or amount. My 300 pound football-playing grandson eats a lot but
is he addicted to food? No. Addiction,
in addition to frequency or amount, is an inability to stop a behavior even though it's
doing harm - physical risk or harm to your body, legal difficulties, or emotional harm to the addict,
to others, or to his/her relationships with others. The behavior is so needed the addict can't quit.

Carnes (1983, 1992), a major writer in this area,
classifies different levels of sexual addiction. His level 1 includes:

These levels make it clear
that a wide variety of behaviors are considered sexual addictions. The harm done to others is obvious.
After getting caught, the addict's self-respect plummets, 75%
have thought of suicide. Surely there are a myriad of causes behind these diverse behaviors.

The books by Carnes provide numerous descriptions of
sex addiction cases & some discussion of the common background shared by many addicts.
For instance, he found that 81% of sex addicts
were themselves abused in some way.

He reports that many addicts have unusually negative self-concepts (& so do many of their mates): "I am bad," "No one could love me" & so on. Unfortunately, Carnes's recommendations about addiction treatment reflect primarily
the usual medical / psychiatric endorsement of 12-Step programs.

Unquestionably, being in a good 12-Step group is a good aid to self-control. But many addicts won't go & won't stay in groups. They also need:

Carnes also edits Sexual
Addiction & Compulsivity: The Journal of Treatment & Prevention, which has articles about sexual offenders, women addicts, adolescent addicts, recovery for couples, etc. So, he is a
major contributor to this area.

Patricia Fargason, board member of the National Council on Sexual Addiction
& Compulsion, says sexual addicts often come from oversexualized
homes where the adult's sexual interests intrude to include the children in subtle ways.

Or, sometimes, the addict-to-be learns to soothe his/her childhood anxiety, fears, sexual urges & anger by masturbating & fantasizing; thus, creating a very strong habit. Some psychoanalytic psychiatrists, like Goodman (1998), explore the psychodynamic (& the cognitive-behavioral)
aspects of treatment while trying to integrate the currently popular biochemical thinking as well.

The sexual development area is one in which we know very little; for instance,
we know very little about the development of ordinary sexual attractions to breasts or behinds or penises or hairy bodies
or pornography or promiscuous sex, etc., etc. The attraction to pornography
is mentioned in the section above about

As Stanton Peele points
out, an obsessive over-emphasis on sex can be seen in many teens, during early dating, when "feeling our oats" after a divorce, when a "hunk" or a "hot number" comes into our mundane lives
(like Monica into Bill's) & so on.

These aren't purely biological addictions or some sudden gush of neurotransmitters; they're mental / psychological / emotional
/ physiological events in ordinary lives, not all lives but some. We get over these sexual obsessions in time & in natural
ways.

Our culture even idolizes
some romantic / sexual obsessions; they too can be nearly impossible to stop. These normal sexual over-reactions must not
blind us to the enormous hurt involved in & caused by out-of-controlsexual addictions mentioned above in Carnes's levels.

It's estimated that about 6% of the American population has a problem of some kind with compulsive sex. The fastest
growing group is young professionals. Treatment programs are developing, costing $800 to $1000 per day!

There are also 12-Step
programs available in most major metropolitan areas. Besides Carnes & Goodman, Weiss (1996)
is another major player & has a Website, Sex Addiction Recovery Resources which advertises several of his books, including Women
Who Love Sex Addicts & 101 Practical Exercises for Sexual Addiction Recovery.

There are, of course, several books for therapists treating sexual
addicts & their partners (see Goodman above for a scholarly overview). There
seems to be a special interest in sexual addiction by religion oriented writers (& 12-Step groups) but I haven't cited most of those books.

There are also books & numerous articles about President Clinton &
his possible sexual addiction. I'm not citing them either because relatively little is actually
known, in spite of our obsession for months, about the president's sexual thoughts & life.

In the main, these speculative writings seem to be for an easy publication
&/or financial profit, not sound unbiased research nor a quest for knowledge in this scientifically neglected area. In
terms of the application of science-based knowledge, there's a belief among professionals that compulsive sex, shopping, gambling & Internet useare related to each other & to drug & alcohol addiction, but that the addictions are different from the anxiety-based obsessive-compulsive disorders dealt with in chapter 5.

Of course, sex
addictsembarrass their relatives & friends, get & pass on sexually transmitted diseases, have financial & legal troubles &
they hurt almost everyone they have sex with, in some cases very seriously disrupting lives. It's usually an inconsiderate, morally
corrupt life.

What can an addict do?Get therapy! Get into a support group! Sexual reactions that are inappropriate & dangerous, such as:

Abnormal sexual attractions, for instance, have been extinguished by pairing
pictures of children with electric shock & by using covert sensitization (Rachman & Teasdale,
1970; Barlow, 1974). Is there any self-help available? No well evaluated methods that I know about. Yet, there are
some possibilities:

(1)Work to avoid temptations. We all
know the situations we get into, the way we act & the feelings we have when we attempt to contact & attract someone. Moreover, we know the conditions that trigger our seductive behavior,
the lines we use & the thoughts & intentions we have.

As discussed in chapter 10 about avoiding affairs, we can identify the initial
steps taken towards unwanted temptations. Perhaps discussing the urges with our significant other &/or getting marital
counseling would improve the primary relationship &/or improve one's self-control. Joining a self-help group is important.

(2)Self-punish or de-condition the sexual urges. Covert sensitization was mentioned above & you might reduce
your urges by pairing the experiencing of the sexual urge or an image of the typical sexual target with very noxious thoughts
(having very shaming self-critical thoughts or fantasies of getting caught & divorced or arrested
or severely punished).

The Methods #18 & #19
in chapter 11 provide some guidelines for this self-punishment procedure. Essentially, this is the opposite of desensitization
which reduces your fear of a situation, i.e. you want to increase your fear & avoidance of a situation.

By pairing the unwanted-but-tempting
behavior (or imagined behavior) with an unpleasant or self-critical thought or with pain, the tendency to think about or to approach a tempting stimulus should decline.

(3)Modify one's attitudes towards the opposite sex. See the section on Turn ons for Men & Women in chapter 10 (or
just look up Centerfold Syndrome in this book's search engine).

Many of the
sexual addictions involve a dehumanization of the target person or group. The addict sees
the attractive woman as a physical object made up of sexual parts, referred to as the Centerfold Syndrome.

But, in spite of fashions,
our sex-ladden culture & the entertainment industry, men can learn to control their disrespectful lustful responses simply
by recognizing them as demeaning & offensive. If you can't restrain yourself from "making a pass" at every attractive
person in your environment, you need therapeutic help.

"Love is all you need." For the person addicted to love, this becomes more than a popular lyric. It becomes literal truth. What is love addiction & why are some men & women addicted to love?
How can the problem be identified & how can those addicted be helped?

Fearful ofchange, addictive lovers will stifle development of their own self, finding the ultimatesecurity in believing they can become indistinguishable from their mate. Sometimes the fear ofchange is so great all individual development of abilities, interests & desires is suppressed. Stagnation is a common characteristic of addictive love relationships.

If
you discover you are in an addictive relationship, you may want to seek professional assistance. Specialized counseling is
available for those dealing directly or indirectly w/this form of addiction.

Risk Factors for AnorexiaPersons with anorexia often have a terrible fear of being overweight. They fear that they're too fat & place themselves
on extreme diets that lead to severe & dangerous weight loss. Convincing anorexics that they're actually dangerously thin
or malnourished is difficult or impossible.

Risk Factors for AnorexiaAnorexics in particular seem to be particularly sensitive to being perceived as too fat. They may also fear losing control of their eating habits & may have a strong
desire to control or contain powerfulemotions. Anorexics may compulsively exercise, count calories, starve or severely restrict food, self-induce
vomiting & irresponsibly use diet pills, laxatives or diuretics.

Some personality characteristics, behaviors &
physical attributes are also warning signs of anorexia.

Warning Signs of BulimiaBulimics tend to eat large
amounts of food at one time (usually
sweets) & then they induce vomiting or take
laxatives to get rid of the food. This pattern is called "binging & purging."

It's estimated that 55% to 70% of us Americans
are overweight, about 25%-35% of us are just plain obese (20% or more over-weight), while another 12% are classified severely overweight.

An estimated 44% of us go on a diet sometime during each year, explaining
the enormous amount spent on diet books. Fat, especially in our upper body, endangers our health.

In women, the risk of heart disease increases
w/the addition of only 10 - 12 lbs. above your ideal weight or your weight at 18. The obese have 3 to 5 times the risk of
heart disease, 4 to 5 times the risk of diabetes, more back trouble & in general, a
lower quality of life for a shorter while.

Note: being obese or even just a little over-weight is regarded negatively in our culture (Moyer
calls it "demonized"). Remember, being over-weight
may have physiological causes & over-eating often becomes a powerful habit that is almost impossible to conquer. Large people deserve our sympathy, not our disdain & rejection.

Just a brief note about the prejudice against fat people: It's one of our culture's more unfair discriminations.

About 16% of American parents-to-be would abort an untreatably fat child if it could be predicted, that's about the
same as a retarded child. Fat people scare many children by age 3 or 4 because they look different.

There's clear evidence that obesity is correlated w/many more medical problems & expenses than smoking or drinking,
but this relationship may not be causal or as simple as it seems. Dr. Glen Gaesser (2002) reports
that today's popular health literature implies that being over-weight is responsible for 300,000 deaths a year.

He believes fat may not be the main villain because several other unhealthy characteristics are often associated w/being over-weight,
such as:

poor diet

lack of exercise

poor fitness

bad dieting habits

inadequate health care & so on

Providing some confirmation
of this notion, Dallas's Cooper Institute has found that the high mortality rates among the obese was explained by activity
levels, not weight.

Those researchers suggest that a brisk 1/2 hour walk every day will result in the same mortality rates as thin people
have. Books for weight-control may be over-emphasized while books about exercise are under-emphasized. See exercise.

Ordinary, simple overeating is very common but there are several types of quite serious eating disorders. Overeating can develop into frequent recurrent overeating episodes called Binge Eating Disorder.

There's a chance that bingeing &/or very strict dieting can develop into Bulimia or Anorexia. Bulimia involves impulsive binge eating followed by harmful self-induced vomiting, laxative or diuretics use & compulsive exercise.

Anorexia involves seeing one's self as fat when in reality you're very thin; this is a dangerous disorder because anorexics
may refuse to eat, eventually starving themselves to death (1 in 10 die from a related cause).

About 10 million American women have an eating disorder, although it's adolescent & young women who account for
90% of the disorders - 50,000 will die as a result.

About 15% of teenage girls have some kind of eating disorder but only 1/3 seek help (some are embarrassed, others don't realize they have a serious problem).
Bulimics often remain normal in weight, so no one else knows, but between 1% & 3% of young women suffer this disorder.
Men are as over-weight as women but they don't have anorexia & bulimia nearly as often.

Although often left untreated, eating disorders can devastate the body & the mind (depression, anxiety, addictions). I won't give
details, but believe me, this is a serious matter. Eating disorders &/or being obese (say, 50+ pounds overweight) should usually be treated by professionals - these are deeply ingrained addictions
& often not responsive to self-help.

Ideally a team is needed: psychologist, physician & nutritionist. Ordinary overeating or moderate overweight may be a self-help problem. But when
your weight creates a physical problem or a serious psychological problem or if your self-help efforts just aren't working
any more, get professional help.

Some sources of information & professional treatment for eating disorders are given below, but the self-help methods
& references mentioned here are for toning up & shedding up to 20-30 lbs. over many weeks or months.

Losing weight requires either taking in less or burning off more. The research strongly
suggests that both a restricted diet (fewer calories, less fat, more fruit & vegetables, less snacking, avoiding rich foods) & an exercise program (burning 1000+ calories
per week) are necessary for most overweight people.

Indeed, some studies have
indicated that for some people weight loss may only come w/ vigorous (90% of maximum) exercise for months, not light exercise.

Hard exercise seldom makes you feel tired, to the contrary, exercise
usually gives you energy (although
you may go to sleep earlier). There are people,
however, who find hard exercise so unpleasant that they'd stop trying to lose weight if they had to exercise. So, adjust to
your needs.

Feeling tired is often actually caused by the lack of exercise, called "sedentary inertia." So, a demanding exercise program is for some a must, for others moderate exercise &
a restricted diet will work. Several Web sites discuss exercise: APA Help Center & CNET: Downloads contain 50 or more software programs to aid weight loss via exercise.
Many search engines will generate a few thousand weight loss & exercise sites.

It has been demonstrated that many women are in a bad mood (moredepression,insecurity &anger) after viewing pictures of fashion models. Some therapists
think the combination of envying thin models & a negative self-critical mood prompts women to binge & then purge.

Psychology Today (Jan, 1997) did a survey
that showed that 24% of women & 17% of men would sacrifice 3 years of their life to be their desired weight. It becomes an unhealthy cycle: body loathing causes emotional distress which increases the disgust w/the body.

Psychology Today's suggestions for accepting & feeling better about your body are: Stop looking at fashion magazines or ads anywhere. Realize your self-concept must be much broader than looks; weight isn't what makes you a good or bad person.

Appreciate all the uses, abilities & uniqueness of your body just as it is. Do things that make you feel good about your body - exercise, dress well, have good sex, etc. Change or get out of negative relationships.

Clearly one of the questions facing every overweight person is this: Is the problem
my habitual overeating or some underlying emotions that drive me to eat? The answer isn't easy. Being over-weight may upset us & emotions may cause over-eating.

i.e., over-weight 9 & 10-year-olds don't suffer low-esteem but by 13 or 14 they do! On the other hand, people dieting, who have a history of depression, are at risk of becoming depressed again (the same is true
of people stopping smoking).

So, the answer is "well, for some people it's just family customs or habits of loving
beer & pizza" & for other people the answer is worry about body image, depression, marital stress, conflicts at work, workaholism, or hundreds of other possibilities. You may need to figure it out in your case.

Capaldi (1996) tries to help us understand how eating patterns are based on life experiences & how to change those patterns. Thompson (1996) explains
more about the connections between body image & eating.

Agood book to help you start exploring the emotional
possibilities underlying eating is Abramson (1998). To consider the more psychoanalytic
reasons for overeating, such as an unconscious desire to be fat or a fear of being thin & sexy, read Levine (1997).

There's probably no way to determine w/any certainty the role of motions in driving your food/drink intake except by

Keep in mind that although a lot of research is being done & much is thought to be known, we're still pretty ignornant about all 3 - weight, emotions & changing our bodies. Many studies are small, say w/20 subjects or so & result in conflicting "findings," other
studies are suspect because they were supported by companies selling a product or people pushing a diet & some pronouncements
just aren't true.

i.e., a recent study (Anderson, 1999) reported
that very over-weight dieters who went on a very low calorie diet (500-800 calories per day) & lost weight quickly had kept more pounds off 7 years later compared to slow losers.

That's in conflict w/the standard expert recommendations, like Weight Watchers, of a slow loss of weight by learning new eating habits. Likewise,
it's popular to pronounce that losing weight (e.g. 5% or 10% of your weight) doesn't
prolong life but exercising does.

Yet, there are new findings (Scientific American Frontiers, Public Television, Jan 25, 1999) suggesting that a very low calorie but nutritious diet improves
health & prolongs life by a very significant amount, at least in mice. Let's not get too certain of what we "know." One
thing everyone agrees on however: consult w/a doctor if you're considering an extreme diet (which may cause gallstones & perhaps other problems).

Important health concerns & our excessive obsession w/thinness result in the
brisk sale of diet, cook & weight loss books. The hundreds of new diet books every year mainly repeat each other.

And nutritional theory changes like fashions from a high carbohydrate diet to high protein diet to low fat, back to
a Mediterranean diet (w/olive
oil) & we will go to something new next year.

Another critical skill is behavioral self-control as spelled out in the Methods for Controlling Behavior section of this chapter. Several books, some fairly old, also spell
out techniques for controlling eating over the long haul.

Keeping in mind that calming the emotions that trigger eating-for-comfort & using diet/exercise methods that you can enjoy for a long lifetime are important, try some of these books:

Local diet & exercise centers are also available almost everywhere. Remember before investing money that most diet
programs produce weight loss but 95% fail eventually, usually within 1 to 5 years.

However, the better your general coping skills, as described in the Methods section of this book or in the books cited
above, the more likely you will take it off. And if you focus on relapse prevention & maintenance, you can keep the weight
off.

It's probably fair to say that the people who maintain their weight loss also exercise for life, have social support, understand behavioral self-control methods & confront their personal-emotional-interpersonal problems directly.

The strength & tenacity of bad eating habits is shown by Perri's (1998) review of the effectiveness of weight loss programs w/obese patients. Most programs take off some weight & some
programs continue the maintenance of weight loss by extending the treatment & using phone calls as follow up.

But, as Perri says, maintenance effectiveness tends to dissolve after termination. That means that you have to pay
as much attention to relapse prevention as to weight loss. See Relapse Prevention in chapter 11 to control your impulse eating & re-start the weight loss plan as soon as you regain two pounds!

Opinions differ about dieting. The professionals who work with anorexics & bulimics caution against diets because severe dieting
is seen so often in their clients' history (they favor exercise rather than diets).

To prove their point a recent study found that the 8%-10% of teenage girls who dieted severely were 18 times more likely
to develop an eating disorder than girls who had not dieted. (It shouldn't surprise anyone that diets are the first step but the study underscores
that severe dieting may serve as a warning sign.)

Another group of professionals simply say all diets are bad because they don't work in the long run. On the other hand,
professionals dealing w/very overweight clients consider diets to be a main solution to serious health problems.

The facts are: obesity is certainly a health risk; weight loss is usually beneficial but can increase certain risks,
e.g. yo-yo dieting year after year is associated w/certain chronic diseases; diets do work (maintenance often fails); learning how to maintain weight loss is badly
needed (Brownell &
Rodin, 1994).

Many diet centers & hospitals offer classes for extremely overweight people which provide detailed knowledge about
how the body uses food, the role of fiber & fat, how to prepare better meals & how much exercise is needed.

Many (indeed, most) people don't know these things about nutrition, but once they know
exactly how their diet & exercise program needs to be changed, they'll often do it. I urge you to get that knowledge. Two of the better current books about fat & nutrition
are by Bailey (1991,
1999) & Ornish (1993).

Bailey also has 4 PBS videos (1-800-645-4PBS). It's commonly thought that very strict diets will be so unpleasant that
people will not stick w/them, but research has shown that stricter diets are actually more effective. Strict diets tend to
be simpler & easier to follow.

Losing weight may require attention to your feelings & interpersonal relationships. Obviously, if overeating is a misguided attempt to handle some emotional pain, the emotionsneed to be dealt with. See Abramson (1993) for ordinary "emotional eating" & Sandbeck (1993) for the shame, guilt & low self-esteem that often underlie bulimia or anorexia.

Virtue (1989) & LeBlanc (1992) also address this specific situation. Farrell's Lost for Words, a psychoanalytic view, is online. Empty lives can cause cravings
for food; unhappy spouses gain 2 to 3 times the weight that happy spouses do!

For the various unhealthy psychological uses of fat in a marriage, see Stuart & Jacobson (1987). Therapists report that over-eaters often need unusual attention, nurturance & warmth. Roth (1989, 1993), a good
writer & Greeson (1994) have written that food is used to replace the love that is missing.

It's been reported that depression may increase while dieting but people are usually happier after the fat is gone (Brownell & Rodin, 1994).
Interestingly, interpersonal therapy focusing on relationships
& attitudes toward weight has been just as effective as cognitive-behavioral therapy focusing on eating habits. Self-help groups are
often helpful, too (Weiner,
1999).

Another resource you should consider seriously is Overeaters Anonymous, a world-wide organization. To find a local group
see Overeaters Anonymous in your White or Yellow Pages or email overeatr@technet.nm.org for information. There are two OA
Web sites: Recovery & Overeaters Anonymous.

Keep in mind that 12-step programs, like OA & AA, need to be supplemented w/nutritional information & cognitive-behavioral
self-help methods. A caution: it has been reported that some anorexics become more anorexic after interacting w/fellow anorexics
in support groups or chat groups.

Since most people try to lose weight on their own, it is to be expected that self-help programs and methods will appear.
Fairburn (1995) has developed a science based self-help program for overcoming the binge eating.
Crisp, Joughin, Halek & Bowyer (1997) offer self-help to anorexics.

Schmidt & Treasure (1994) describe self-help methods for bulimics. Remember, serious
eating disorders need professional help too. Peterson, et al (1998) found that a structured group
self-help approach was as effective with binge eaters as therapist lead psychoeducational and discussion groups. Burnett,
Taylor & Agras (1985) and, more recently, Personal Improvement Computers have developed small hand-held computers that assist moderately overweight
patients to control and monitor their food intake.

Bulimics and anorexics usually have additional psychological and interpersonal problems beyond the abnormal eating.
They often have poor social skills and are frequently in conflict with family members. Young bulimic women tend to be dependent
and have trouble separating from their mothers. Judi Hollis (1994) says she has never met a starving or bingeing woman who
wasn't raging inside, usually at her mother. Serious eating disorders require professional treatment.

People with eating disorders need to learn better communication and problem-solving skills and, then, change their eating-exercise
habits, such as having regular meals that include previously avoided foods, learning new ways of handling the bingeing-purging
situations, and modifying their attitudes towards their shape and weight (see the previous section in this chapter). This
usually means therapy. Thus far, the cognitive-behavioral methods are only fairly effective with bulimia by persuading the
patient to stop dieting since bingeing is a natural reaction to starving the body (Wilson, 1993). Also, after the binge-purge
cycles stop, the person needs to cognitively accept his/her "natural weight," based on healthy food and exercise. Keep in
mind, serious eating disorders are remarkably resistant to change; only half of patients in treatment will be fully recovered
in five years (American Journal of Psychiatry, 1997, vol 153). Like all long-term disorders, bulimia and anorexia place great
stress on the family; they all may need help (Sherman & Thompson, 1997). Unfortunately, the prevention programs for young
at risk women have, thus far, not been effective. These urges are hard to change.

There are many additional sources of help. See Bennion, Bierman & Ferguson (1991) for a factual discussion of weight
control. Parents worry about their children's weight too; there is help (Archer, 1989). Perri, Nezu, & Viengener (1992),
Epstein, et al (1994), and Brownell & Wadden (1992) provide therapists with guidelines for managing serious obesity. For
information and referrals about anorexia and/or bulimia, call 847-831-3438. For more information about locating Cognitive-Behavioral
therapists, call 212-647-1890 or try the Web site for abbt. All obese people and persons with an eating disorder should have
a psychological or psychiatric evaluation, including an assessment of the family. Most importantly, you must realize that
extreme anorexia, called "the fear of being fat," can be fatal (5% die, half from complications and half from suicide); don't
put off getting professional treatment for anorexia and bulimia, three-quarters can be helped by behavioral therapy. See eating
disorders at the end of the next chapter.

Guidelines for Losing Weight if
Moderately Overweight

1. Remember the expertise
of 3 disciplines are involved: psychology, nutrition & medicine. You need to know some of all 3.

3. Realize that good weight
loss is probably not starving, a crash diet, pills, or a special “program,” it's simply acquiring the habits to
eat good tasting, healthy food in the right amount for the rest of your life.

For some dieters, especially
those w/a lot to lose, a special diet is necessary to get satisfying results. Get your "bulk," as my Grandmother used to say.
That means high fiber - vegetables, beans, fruit, nuts & grains - which give you only half as many calories as meat, sugars,
cheeses & fried foods.

An occasional "day off" may make a long diet more tolerable.

4. Weight loss almost always
involves increased exercise. Be active, move around even in sedentary jobs; it’s good for you. If exercise is hard for
you & you do little, read Fenton & Bauer (1995) who recommend walking. Also, strength training ("pumping iron") will add muscle as fat comes off; muscle burns more calories & keeps your metabolic rate
high (Nelson, 1999). If you're not used to hard exercise, see a physician, build up gradually
& guard against injuries.

Histories including teasing,
rejection, abuse, death of a loved one & giving birth are common. These factors make losing weight a little harder but
they won’t stop a determined self-helper.

9. Realize that medication
can be of help w/certain eating disorders, especially bulimia.

10. If changing your eating
habits seems to be impossible after several weeks of trying, get serious about discovering the emotions & needs underlying your overeating (see the books & Web sites listed above). If that doesn’t
work, get professional help from a psychologist w/experience in this area.

11. Find the emotional
roots of your urge to eat. What are the psychological concerns (relationships, frustrations, needs) underlying the eating problem. If you can reduce those concerns, you have a better chance of stopping overeating
& of avoiding relapse (The Weight Control Digest, May/June, 1997).

12. Keeping a food diary
is very helpful, especially if you record the circumstances in which the urge occurs, what you were thinking, feeling & doing immediately before hand & how you responded to the urge to eat. A graph showing your progress can be very
satisfying. A recent study at Duke University shows that bingeing by women is triggered by depression, getting off their diets,
gaining weight, low self-esteem & anxiety. Bingeing by men is preceded by anger, getting off their diets, thoughts of food, conflicts & fasting. Plans ways of dealing w/your triggers to binge.

13. Celebrate & brag
when your pants are loose & slipping down. (Actually it's important to reward in some brief
way the achievement of each daily & weekly goal.)

14. Make plans to maintain
your gains. Use relapse prevention if needed. In any case, get serious about your weight whenever you gain 2-3 pounds over your desired weight, taking into account your
normal weight changes by time of day & for women, time of month.

15.
Live a long, active, healthy life.

Addiction to Shopping

Compulsive
spending, impulse buying& over-spending to the point of financial disaster are good, fun habits gone awry. The interesting,excitingactivities of shopping have become anobsessional escape &/or an irrational way to handle emotions.

The compulsive shopper
buys things they want at the moment even if they don't have the money to pay for them. Often this is done to cheer themselves up or to reward themselves during down times, even though their own history has been of feeling guilty & sadafter overspending.

They're willing (compelled is more accurate) to go into debt with no idea how to pay for the purchase. Several studies have found 5% to 10% of the American population are
compulsive buyers & another 15% or so are overspenders.

Indeed, that's about 60 million struggling
with overspending & only 1/3 of Americans are saving anything for retirement. We'd rather
buy a new car now than save for our children's education, even though we'd agree that an education is much more important than driving a new car (those
long-range goals are easily forgotten).

Also, becausecompulsive shoppers often buy things that enhance their image (e.g. clothes or jewelry for the woman or sports equipment, a car, or a motorcycle
for the guy), it's thought that buying is often intended to build our sagging self-esteem.

It also seems obvious, but I don't know of research supporting this, that over-spending
might be a way to "get something from" an unsupportive partner's bank account or to "get back at" a resented partner.

What research does show is that habitual shoppers
also have higher rates of anxiety, eating disorders, substance
abuse & poor impulse control. Overspending disorders are described in detail by Mellan (1997), Arenson (1991), Coleman & Hull-Mast (1995) & others.

The urge to go shopping tends to occur every few
days or every week or so. The urge only lasts for about an hour but, in an addict, the urge can
be resisted only about 1/4 of the time. Usually the compulsive shopper
has no shopping list prepared in advance, only an awareness of their favorite departments.

Some, however, are bargain shoppers. The fact is though that, about half the time,
they never use their purchase, leaving it packaged, returning it, or disposing of it. What is accumulated are large debts,
often several thousand dollars on credit cards.

It isn't unusual for an addicted spender to spend
half the total family income on these shopping sprees.

There are also 12-Step programs available (400 Debtors Anonymous groups in the US). Other Web sites provide a DA bibliography
& more info about getting out of debt: see Debtors Anonymous Information.

Some people have found it refreshing to observe the misc.consumers.frugal-living
Newsgroup because the conservative attitude seen there is so different from the impulsive spending attitude.

Also a private e-mail forum, called Solvency, is available & provides personal support as well as self-help information about controlling spending urges. To join this group send a message to listserv@maelstrom.stjohns.edu
w/this in the body: Subscribe Solvency firstname lastname

as soon as you get your pay check. By carefully setting (1)
to include only a small amount for optional "spending" & by considering (2) & (3) sacred, one might control the over-spending.

Any reasonable spending plan would work with most people, but, by the very nature of a serious addiction,
this kind of rational decision-making probably won't work. Perhaps it would work if there is a firm commitment to the plan.

In many cases, however, initially the compulsive buyer may have to turn money management over to someone else who is willing to totally control the money for all purposes, only allowing the over-spender a small amount each week of account (1) for non-essential shopping.

A person w/a lesser addiction
may just have to avoid stores. Keep in mind, the urge to shop weakens if you can restrain yourself an hour or so. Some moderately impulsive people can go shopping without money or credit cards (it's possible to have a great time shopping w/a friend w/out buying anything, you
know).

If a real buy is found, you can impose on yourself a one-day waiting period, then consult with your
partner about the appropriateness of the purchase before going back & buying. Several systems like this have worked for
many people.

According to a 1993 survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine, in 1991, about 21 million Americans made 425 million visits to practitioners of these types of alternative medicine; that's
more than the estimated 388 million visits we made to all primary care physicians that year.

Now a holistic approach where an individual's situation & particular way of coping is addressed - & going cold turkey may not be necessary - is slowly beginning to influence the way people with addictions are treated.

Holistic therapies are helping to bridge the gap between conventional, exclusively abstinence-oriented
approaches & the newer, more controversial harm-reduction philosophy.

When addressing
anaddiction, all holistic techniques begin with the same basic philosophy: people developaddictions to correct an "imbalance" within them.

Addicts
become stuck, unaware & unable to deal with their thoughts, feelings & actions. They may drink, take drugs, or eat to excessto
disassociate from their deficiency.

Holistic philosophy overlaps with the harm-reduction approach to addiction, which evolved out of a desire, about 10 years ago, to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS & hepatitis among injection drug users
by dispensing clean needles.

People running
syringe exchanges realized they had an opportunity to provide additional services to drug
users. Now a number of harm-reduction centers - offering programs including acupuncture,
massage therapy & substance use counseling; referrals to detoxification & treatment facilities; & caseworkers to help with housing, food stamps & medical
care have sprung up in cities like New York, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, San Francisco & Oakland.

Run by
current & former drug users, for current & formerdrug
users, these centers don't demand that clients remain abstinent. From experience they know that no one can be
forced into dealing with a problem & that people who are treated with respect & who are educated about their choices can & often do elect to help themselves.

Holistic therapies do have their skeptics, of course. There's concern that these therapies haven't been properly studied or regulated. "As a general rule, holistic
therapies are most helpful when they're used in conjunction with - not in place of - other treatments," says Barrie
R. Cassileth, Ph.D., an adjunct professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill & Duke University,
who has written extensively on alternative therapies & cancer treatment.

Cassileth
sees the need for methodologically sound, rigorous clinical tests before any claims about the capabilities of holistic treatments can be made. Frank Gawin, M.D., scientific director of a laboratory examining addictions at the University of California Los Angeles, agrees.

He's currently
involved in a 6-city study - the largest involving an alternative therapy - to determine the effectiveness of acupuncture
on cocaine addiction. Dr. Gawin believes that holistic therapies should continue to be practiced while studies are underway, so long as people receive psychotherapy & are fully informed that these treatments haven't been proven effective. "There are no magic bullets," Cassileth concludes.
"People ought to be wary of those who say they have one."

Many Older Adults Drink Too Much

Reuters Health - By Alison McCook - Wednesday, November
3, 2004

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Between 1/4
& 1/2 of adults in their 50's & 60's drink more than the recommended amount of alcohol, putting them at risk
of problems related to their drinking, according to new research.

Among older adults who drank too much, men were more likely than women to experience problems such asruptured relationships, or difficulties with day-to-day activities. These findings suggest that drinking guidelines, many of which currently allow men more drinks per week than women,
should be equally stringent for both genders, the authors note.

"The guidelines for
alcohol use should be no more liberal for older men than for older women," study author Dr. Rudolf H. Moos told Reuters Health.

Currently, the Dept. of Agriculture recommends no more than 2 drinks per day for men & 1 for women. Similarly, the
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism recommends a limit of 14 drinks per week for men & 7 for women.

The American Geriatrics Society defines dangerous drinking for older adults as more
than 1 drink per day, or more than 7 drinks per week, or more than 3 drinks on any occasion.

To investigate how many older adults follow these guidelines, Moos & his colleagues asked 1,291 drinkers between the ages of 55 & 65 how much they typically
drank, then re-contacted them 10 years later to see if their drinking patterns had changed.

The investigators also asked people if they'd had any problems related to their drinking, such as family members or
friends telling them they were worried about how much they drank or if alcohol had interfered with
their functioning, by causing them to fall or neglect other activities for instance.

People who said alcohol had created at least 2 problems in their lives were considered
to have a drinking problem. The researchers report their findings in the American Journal of Public Health.

Moos & his team found that, depending on which guideline they used, between 23 &
50% of women drank more than they should, as did between 29 & 45% of men.

"A moderately high proportion of older
women & men may engage in potentially unsafe patterns of alcohol use," said Moos, who is based at the VA Health Care System in Menlo Park, California.

Among people who exceeded any of the guidelines, men were more likely to have problems than women.

Previous research has suggested that men are more likely to drink in unhealthy ways, such as drinking quicker, drinking outside of meals, downing every drink they're served & drinking more in a shorter
period.

"Thus, even though they consume a comparable
number of drinks, men may engage in alcohol use behaviors associated with higher levels
of alcohol consumption, resulting in more harmful alcohol use consequences," Moos &
his team write.

They conclude that alcohol consumption guidelines for older adults - both men &
women - should be no more than 7 drinks per week & no more than 3 drinks "per heavy-use occasion."

SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, November 2004.

Binge
Drinking Entrenched in College CultureThere's
No Magic Bullet to Stop Dangerous Alcohol Use on Campus, But Many Say aChange inAttitude IsNeeded

By JONANN BRADY- ABC News

Sept. 7, 2005: It's been nearly a year since 19-year-old
Samantha Spady was found dead ofalcohol poisoningin a fraternity house at Colorado State University. Spady's blood alcohol content was 0.436 -5 times the legal limit- & investigators sayshe consumed up to 40 drinks the day before she died.

Spady's death was far from the only alcohol-related campus tragedy
last year & as school starts up again this year, colleges & universitiesacross the country
are bracing for more booze-fueled chaos.

Each year, college drinking contributes to an estimated1,400student deaths, 500,000injuries& 70,000 cases ofsexual assault or date rape, according
to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism, a part ofthe federal National Institutes
of Health.

Government & universities are pouring millions of dollars into programs
to crack down on or curb campus "binge
drinking," but there's been
little change in students' behavior over the past decade.

Many experts studying alcohol use on college campuses say excessive drinking
is so deeply entrenched in the culture, only a radical shift in students' attitude toward drinking will help.

What Is 'Binge Drinking'?

Spady's parents, Patty & Rick, have started a group called the SAM (Student Alcohol Management) Spady Foundation, whose mission is to educate students & parents about risky alcohol use.

Patty Spady says she & her husband "regret daily" that they never talked to Sam - a former homecoming queen & high school class president - about the
fact that heavy drinking could be deadly. But she also admits that she wasn't totally aware of the dangers herself.

"I feel like kids are
going out with the intention of getting drunk," she said. "About that style of drinking - I was totally na´ve."

Binge drinking is commonly defined as having 5 or more drinks in one sitting & the number of
college students considered binge drinkers - around 44% - has stayed about
the same for the past decade.

But ask many college students & that definition ofbinge drinking seems ludicrous.

Barrett Seaman, a former Time magazine editor, observed student behavior on 12 college campuses
for his recently released book, "Binge: What Your College Student Won't Tell You." He found that many students are drinking
far more than 5 drinks over the course of a night.

"Students are routinely knocking back 20 shots
a night," Seaman said.

Pregaming & Other Drinking
Rituals

Seaman, who admits he did his fair share of drinking at Hamilton College in upstate New York in the 1960's, says he
was struck by the "intensity" of student drinking today.

One common ritual he saw while reporting for the book was "pregaming," where underage students sat in their dorm rooms
or apartments & drank massive amounts
of alcohol, usually hard liquor, in order to catch a buzz
before going out for the evening.

Seaman says that because drinking is illegal for so many college students, they're forced to do it covertly - &
often dangerously - because there's no telling when they will get another drink as they roam from party to party.

"It's cool to be ostentatiously drunk," he said. "It shows you're part of the elite who has access to alcohol."

Dr. Hoyt Alverson, an anthropology professor at Darmouth University, had his undergraduate students spend 3 years studying
fellow students' social behavior at the school. Alcohol, he says, is inextricably linked w/social life on campus.

In his study, he writes that first-year students especially fear being alone in their new environment & drinking is simply the best & easiest way of "forming friendships, competing,
blowing off steam, … 'hooking up,' fitting in & getting ahead amongst one's peers."

Students at Dartmouth & other schools play elaborate drinking games like beer pong, Thumper
& others at parties. And drinking is often an important ingredient in "hooking up" w/the opposite sex.

"Heavy drinking is so ritually scripted on
campuses," Alverson said.

Harm Reduction & 'Social
Norming'

But the campus didn't disband all fraternities or ban alcohol in general. Instead, CSU & other colleges are hoping
that educating students about the harmful
consequences of heavy drinking - like sexual assault & alcohol poisoning - will be more successful.

Many colleges' harm reduction programs include peer-education groups & tips on staying safe while drinking that go far beyond a "don't drink & drive"
message. They're telling women students to stick together at parties & never leave a friend behind
& how to recognize if someone is in physical danger from drinking.

"Scare tactics are out the door," Haynes
said.

CSU is also trying out a "social norms" campaign, which attempts to correct students' misperceptions about fellow students'
behavior.

In a sense, social norming is peer pressure in reverse. The theory is that students overestimate how much their peers drink & that by giving them accurate
information about "campus norms," it will encourage them to change their behavior.

Though it's early in the year to tell how the tactic is affecting student behavior, Haynes is hopeful. "I see how social norming affects them [students]," she said. "They respond to positive messages."

And according to the National Social Norms Resource Center, campuses that have used social norms programs have seen
rates of what they call "heavy episodic alcohol
consumption" drop significantly.

Some Call for a Culture Change

In American culture, college students occupy that vague place between adolescence & adulthood & in many ways,
drinking, partying & breaking the rules are part of this transitional "growing-up" period.

So while drinking at college is nothing new, what is new is the way today's students are doing it.

Seaman & Alverson agree that raising the drinking age to 21 has been counterproductive. By making it illegal to
drink, students' behavior is repressed & driven underground. Their drinking becomes furtive, intensified & in many
cases, dangerous.

Besides going to several American campuses, Seaman also visited McGill University in Montreal - a college that more
than 2,000 American students attend. The drinking age there is 18 & Seaman said the attitude toward drinking at McGill is far more "civilized," even among American students.

"In American schools, there's a very confusing message to students: Are they kids or
are they adults?" Seaman said.

Both Seaman & Alverson say that changing the drinking age back to 18 would be a good start in changing campus drinking
culture, but they also say that a radical behavior & attitude shift would take time.

"It's important to keep the conversation going about alcohol &drugs," Seaman said. "Students are very open about it. If you treat them as adults, they'll act like adults."

Some
researchers have categorized people withalcoholismasType 1 orType 2.

Type 1 individualsare more oftenwomen. They typicallybecome alcoholic at a later age, have less severe symptoms or fewer psychiatric problems & have a better outlook on life than those classified
as type 2.

Type 2 peopleare more likely to bemale. They tend tobecomealcoholicat
an early age & have a high family risk
foralcoholism, more severe symptoms & anegative outlook on life.

Amongadolescents, problem drinking is associated with delinquency, violence & lower grades.Alcohol may increase blood pressure or pulse rate & thus,
may be associated with strokes. Alcoholcertainly is aserious threat to a developing fetus; please, never drink when pregnant.

In temperance cultures
(where alcohol is
viewed as a dangerous addiction from which you must totally abstain), drinkers tend to binge to get drunk, rather than drink beer or wine with
meals every day.

In cultures where drinking is acceptedas a daily part of life, people seldom get drunk & when they do
have health problems from drinking, the family simply helps them get back on a healthy diet. "Demon
alcohol" isn't blamed & a religious solution, like AA, isn't prescribed.

Men are more likely
than women to become addicted to alcohol. The slippery slope ofalcoholismis pretty predictable for men:

by mid to late 20's, there are binges, morning drinking &d job problems

by late 30's to early 40's, there are serious medical problems, such as vomiting blood, hepatitis, hallucinations,
convulsions, hospitalizations & life in general is a wreck

The earlier you get off the
slope, the better. It can be a slow suicide, with your only "friend" in the end being a bottle. If you have any reason to believe you may be in trouble, DO SOMETHING, NOW! DENIAL IS THE GREATEST RISK.

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